The rise and fall of civilizations - How did it happen?

When looking back at world history, it is sometimes difficult to determine the exact cause of the rise and fall of civilizations. Different civilizations seem to rise at the same time in different geological regions with completely different social and political structures. Even with different social and political structures, most seem to end by the relatively same means. It seems that the civilization grows and is stable for a while but after a certain amount of time, some kind of unrest happens. The unrest may be warring with neighbors, the overthrow of the political leaders by the people who feel that they are oppressed or by becoming physically too large to maintain control of the entire region. I wonder if the “oppression: is a naturally evolving human reaction to when there is a social status that is put in place when people are living in close proximity with each other. You would think that civilizations would learn from the past history to see that in the end, people will revolt against that and it will bring chaos and the end of the current structure.

It also seems that the second wave of civilizations seemed to incorporate the farther reaching religious philosophies no matter what form it becomes. There are multiple different religions that have evolved that seem to try and answer the reasons on why we are here and what it looks like on the other side. In China, different philosophies have also changed in the same region over time. They have moved from Confucius philosophy to Dao philosophy and legalism or some type of hybrid that tries to take into account all three. China has also looked back into the past to try and revive its philosophy on what worked in the past when the current socioeconomic system is in disarray.

Overall it seems that even cultures and civilizations that have a long span of control eventually disappear. The question now is when will it happen again and will it be only regional or will it involve all people?   

Paleolithic and Neolithic influences in the history of the world

It is hard to understand how the rise of different societies in different parts of the world happened in a short amount of evolutionary time. The rise of agriculture and the growing of crops definitely had a large part of when the rise of different civilizations happened. It is also apparent that Homo Sapiens are inherently a social animal and given the choice they will choose to live in a larger group instead of in isolation. When they congregate into larger groups, their differences become more apparent and there is a natural separation into different groups that turn into different classes of people. 

   There are people who are natural leaders that others will follow and usually end up taking a stature of some kind of power within the area of settlement. On the other hand, there are others who are happy to not be a leader and are willing to go about their lives while either following others or living without having large influence over others. It seems that history has shown that when the separation of status happens in each society that there is a tendency to take advantage of others in order to gain more for themselves. 

  Agriculture created settled societies while animal-husbandry created sustenance for other types of societies. When the use of animals is the key factor for sustenance, you need to migrate where the animals are able to graze and feed off of the lands and move around with the seasons. This in turn created a different hierarchy for the race of people that lived within the means of this type of society.